Losing, Chapter 13
by verity candor
Summary: Because, second by second, year by year, everything is getting away from him. T for language.


Losing, Chapter 13

He's wearing that coat, that stupid brown one he _hates._

He wants to burn it.

Behind him, he knows, the doors, the windows, the walls of Number 12 Grimmauld Place are vanishing into a pinprick of space.

Number 11, Number 13, and then nothing. A void. A hole. A (haha) black hole.

A vacuum where a house used to be.

Emptiness.

Silence.

Maybe that's what gets him most. No yelling, no screaming. Silence. Quiet. No one cares. None of them.

Oh, so what, so fucking what?

Life's a bitch, his mum's a bitch, this fucking coat's a bitch.

What did he expect?

Fanfare? Angel choirs?

Flower petals from the sky? (_maybe just goodbye_)

But the fact is that nothing's changed.

No one's coming out to yell at him for existing, no one is going to come out and tell him to behave, no one's coming, period.

Nothing's changed at all.

_(except he's dragging his trunk behind him and he's wearing this dumbass jacket and he's putting his feet one in front of the other and he's never- he's _never_ going back)_

-x-

The war is just loss _(big bloody surprise right?)_

They started out all right, believing it was worth it, they were doing something, fighting for good or whatever.

But what did they get for their bravery, their fucking sacrifice _(but a plot of welltended earth, clean bright grass, and row on row, end to end to-)_

And is it even worth it? Is it even worth it?

They started out believing they'd make it, that they were safe, that they – but bullshit.

Because they're getting picked off one by one _(and they cant stop it because those bastards have someone on the inside and-) _and even though they promised, they promised nothing would change _(and he knows he knows who it has to be) _but it was all a lie, just a great fucking lie _(and he said friends forever and he said youre all I have) _because look at what he's already lost _(and it's Remus it's Moony that bastard)_ look at what he's lost _(it's Moony it's Moony his brother brother brother)_

-x-

_(his brother)_

And that's how Regulus dies.

Like smoke, like air, like nothing at all –

and he _does not_ cry.

_(like a breath, like spun sugar, like melting ice in windowpanes, and 'look, siri, let's play' and like a sharp sting, a spear, a piercing into something near his-)_

-x-

…Prongs?

…

_Prongs._

-x-

_(his _brother_)_

-x-

And later, when that

horrible thin familiar voice

tells him, hissing silent, _This time you lose _he has to ask-

_(because everything's gone now because how many times haven't they - the irony, fucking irony - saved little Peter's arse, he and Prongs. Because how blind, and stupid, and trusting -)_

And-

_(what can you take I haven't lost already)_

He has to laugh-

Laugh and laugh and laugh, because if he stops, even for a moment, even for one solitary second, the tears will come, the tears will pour and flood the earth.

-x-

Darkness.

_(Black)_

Filth.

_(His?)_

Damp.

Mold.

Azkaban is –

_(So cold.)_

Azkaban is-

the broken glasses _(the broken body) _of Prongs – the dying embers of flame-like hair splayed by a crib – the rubble _(No. No. Nono.) – _His mother _(__Bloodtraitorscumfilth(diediedie)_) –Someone's body _(and Benjy Fenwick's face) _– Awful precise cursive _('We believe that Regulus is-)_ and – and finding that the only thing he has to hold on to is

that horrible thin familiar voice

Azkaban takes away-

_Whatcanyou_

Sunshine and

_takeI_

green grass and his bike

_haven't_

and laughter and getting drunk and

_lost_

scrambled eggs and stupid jokes

_alreadyWhatcanyou_

and love

_take_

(and love)

-x-

The first moment. _(Sunsunsun)_

The first moment, it's -

a killing blow, a sledgehammer to his stomach, it's like dying and being born-

_(It's every moment of joy, it's twenty-two years of joy, it's every smile, and laugh, and padfoot, you prat, and youre all i have, and always , and forever, and it)_

it's like a whole world he left behind careening tilting crazily and shattering against him.

_(and it's pain and painandpain_)

Curled into a skeletally thin mass in the sand, he cries.


End file.
